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To Pickle Beef Palates

Pickled beef palates are simmered, seasoned, and preserved in a wine and vinegar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pickle Beef Palates

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the palates

  1. Clean the beef palates.

  2. Simmer them in 1 quart of water for about 5 hours, skimming regularly.

  3. Add mace, cloves, pepper, and sweet herbs to the water while boiling until the palates are tender.

  4. Remove the skin from the palates and cut them into small pieces.

  5. Let them cool covered.

Pickle and store

  1. Make a pickling solution with equal parts white wine and vinegar, the spices used earlier, and salt.

  2. Once the pickling solution is cold, strain it and pour it over the palates, adding fresh spices and bay leaves.

  3. Cover tightly and store for later use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef palates
Provide the meat that becomes tender during long simmering and is then pickled.
White wine and vinegar
Supply acidity in the pickling solution, which preserves the palates and gives them a sharp flavor.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pickling solution cooled before pouring. Pouring hot liquid over the palates would partly cook the meat and warm it into the unsafe temperature range. Cooling the solution first keeps the texture firm and the pickle stable during storage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, pepper, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, white wine, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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